Page 59 of Guy's Girl
At lunch, they talk about trauma.
“There’s just far too much emphasis placed on it,” Tristan says, pinching a cracker from the bowl at the center of their table. “I’m sorry, but not everyone has experienced real trauma.”
Clay says, “You’re wrong, man. Trauma comes in many forms.”
They’re seated on the terrace of a small café just off Váci Street. No real food has arrived yet, but the group has already gone through an entire bottle of white wine.
“It’s true.” Clay signals for the waiter to bring another bottle. “People think that PTSD only happens to war vets. Men who watch their friends get blown up and come home and can’t sleep at night because they keep seeing it happen over and over. And, yes—lots of vets have PTSD. But death isn’t God’s only trauma. He’s got plenty more in store for us.”
Adrian thinks of his father, then. Of a death that happened when Adrian was still inside his mother’s belly. Could he call hisfather’s death a trauma? Could he lay claim to grief or sadness when he and his father had never even existed in the same world?
Of course not.
Not when he knows that the blame for his father’s death is his own.
He snaps out of his thoughts in time to hear Tristan ask Finch, “So, where do you think you’ll do it?”
Beside Tristan, Ginny stiffens.
Adrian blinks. He wants to kick Tristan, who, as usual, is the only one at the table blissfully unaware of the tension between Ginny and Finch, rippling like a dangerous undertow.
Finch runs one hand over his jacket pocket as if he’s still keeping the ring inside. As if he brings it everywhere he goes. “Well, we met my sophomore year of high school, when we both auditioned forWest Side Story. I thought I might do it there. At the theater.”
“Onstage?”
“Yeah.”
Ginny snorts into her wineglass.
Finch raises his eyebrows. “Something to say, Gin?”
“Nope.”
“Adrian,” Clay says loudly, playing with the corner of his plastic menu. “I’ve been really impressed with the way Disney pivoted its Marvel content so seamlessly to streaming.”
Adrian grabs hold of the change in subject. “Me, too, man. I wish I could take more credit, but that’s a completely different division.”
“Can we go back to trauma?” Tristan is talking even more loudly than normal, no doubt a result of his empty third glass of wine. “I mean, what—we’re supposed to just nod along when a therapist says that getting a wedgie in the middle of the hallwaywastraumatic? How is that anywhere near as bad as fighting in the military?”
“Trauma has nothing to do with how ‘bad’ something is,” says Ginny. This is the first full sentence that she’s contributed since they sat down. Until now, she has just been drinking. Steadily.
Everyone turns to listen.
“Trauma happens when you aren’t processing or acknowledging feelings as they happen to you.” She swallows another mouthful of white. “When you experience hurt but push down the pain, or when you experience fear but push down the terror.”
“How do you know that?” Tristan asks.
Ginny shrugs. “Novels aren’tallthat I read.”
“But if men with PTSD—”
“Menandwomen,” Ginny corrects. “In fact, today, right now, far more women experience PTSD than men.” She drains her glass in two more sips and pours herself another. Her cheeks are turning the light pink Adrian remembers from their dates. “Think about it. Think about the people you know. How many men do you know who have actually gone into battle and seen their best friends blown up? Any? And how many women do you know who’ve been raped or sexually assaulted?”
No one responds.
“Almost all of them, probably. And do you think that they just move on without playing back the events in their heads? And not just when they’re trying to fall asleep. No. PTSD is far less predictable. Far more insidious. It happens when they’re just going about their day, just sitting at their desk or folding laundry or arranging a fucking vase of flowers.”
“Ginny,” says Finch.
